Robert Frank
Sometimes when I drink coffee very early in the morning I can go back to sleep, if it's still dark outside, and sleep for another hour or so. It's pretty good sleep too and makes a difference in the way I feel the rest of the day, having gained back the time I lost the night before. It works almost every time.
It's good to see baseball making a comeback! There is something so American about it, that a team can come back from being so far behind and win. It's really been one of the best, most memorable baseball seasons ever, even if it's taken so much time. Baseball's American in a way football isn't, part of baseball's resurgence is no doubt due to football's violence and the suspicion among fans that many of those who play football aren't really American at all or, if American, are part of a faceless corporate conglomeration that pretends to be American.
A great play in baseball is more memorable than a great play in football for some mysterious reason. I'll never forget the play the Kansas City Royal center fielder made the other night, though I've forgotten his name. On a fly ball to center, at a crucial time in the game, he made the catch and then threw a perfect strike to third base to get the runner who'd tagged up trying to advance. It was so beautiful.
It's wonderful too to see the managers and coaches too, the old guys in the dugout, plot and strategize like they're playing dominoes with their friends at the country club on Friday afternoon.
I hope the Kansas City Royals win the World Series, in honor of Harry Truman, and if they don't I'd like to see the San Francisco Giants win it all.
Yesterday at Stanford, I had the pleasure of seeing the show of Robert Frank photographs at the Cantor Arts Center with Tom Meyer, art dealer. At one time Tom had owned many of Frank's photos, including several of those on exhibit. Can I ask you a personal question, I asked him. He said I could if he could then ask me a personal question.
I asked him if he was sorry he had sold the Robert Frank photos and he said no. He'd owned Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams photographs' as well, and sold them too.
After seeing the Robert Frank show Tom and I walked out into the courtyard that separates the Cantor from the Anderson Art Center. We couldn't avoid seeing the big Richard Serra piece made of Cor-Ten steel there or the two women from London standing in it who seem to be lost. When they finally find an opening, so they can walk out of the sculpture, I ask them if they'd seen the Robert Frank show. No, they hadn't, but thank you, they say. It was then I took a picture of an aspect of the Richard Serra piece, thinking it looked like a Robert Frank photograph.
The Giants won last night in 18 innings. By the time I got home from Stanford and took care of a social obligation the game was in the bottom of the 14th. I fell asleep in front of the TV, dreaming in black-and-white that the Giants will soon be playing Kansas City for the World Series.